EP-092 Ryan Burk of Angry Orchard Cider
Today\u2019s guest is someone I\u2019ve been waiting to interview for a couple years now. Since I first started the podcast, he was high on my list,\xa0but for one reason after another, it always seemed like we should wait.\xa0We just didn\u2019t know what we were waiting for, exactly. Ryan Burk is the cidermaker for Angry Orchard, specifically running their new innovation cider house in Walden, NY. He was the former cidermaker at Virtue Cider in Fennville, Michigan. And before that, he was a homebrewer in Chicago. I met him just as he was transitioning from brewer to cidermaker, pouring some of Virtue\u2019s earliest batches.\xa0 You may have seen GBH, and me in particular, take a keen interest in cider over the past couple years. We\u2019ve written about E.Z. Orchards in Salem, Oregon, Rack and Cloth in Mosier, Oregon, and Virtue, among others\u2014and visited many more. Ryan is the reason for all that. He held the door open for me. And in many ways, he still does. Thanks to Ryan, I was able to translate the many things I love about the most exquisite beers in the word, like Saison Dupont and Hill Farmstead, into an equally beautiful and delicious world of cider making. From there, I\u2019ve ventured into natural and low-interventionist wine making as well. And it all started with Ryan.\xa0 He\u2019s become one of my best friends in the world. In fact, the day this podcast episode was published, I was officiating his wedding to Eva Deitch\u2014another name you might be familiar with, as she\u2019s one of the many photographers GBH has collaborated with over the years. I was honored to be asked. As part of Angry Orchard, Ryan also honored our business by asking us to design the labels for his personal collaborations with cidermakers all over the world that will start releasing in the coming months and years.\xa0 So it\u2019s safe to say that my relationship with Ryan is one of the more profound I\u2019ve had in my life. I\u2019m forever thankful for the impact he\u2019s had on me as a person, as a drinker, and the influence we\u2019ve had on each other professionally. That\u2019s what this whole business of GBH is about for me,\xa0and nowhere does it come true more than right here.